MARY, the mother of Jesus, is known in the Catholic Church as the Blessed Virgin Mary. The name is from the Gr. Mapiiku (Mariam) or Maple (Maria), which in turn is from the Heb. Miryam, a word of uncertain meaning. The New Testament narrative is silent as to her parentage and the place and date of her birth. From tradition and other sources we learn that her father was Joachim and her mother Anne, that by them she was presented in the temple at Jerusalem when she was three years old, and that in the temple she remained until the age of 12 or thereabouts. Her birth place is variously stated as being Nazareth, Sephoris (Diocaesarea), or Jerusalem. In early youth she was betrothed to Joseph, a carpenter, a scion of the house of David. She probably belonged herself to the same royal lineage. At all events, she was a cousin of Elizabeth, wife of the priest Zachary and mother of John the Baptist. While Mary was betrothed to Joseph, and before her marriage, she was visited at Nazareth, a city of Galilee, by the angel Gabriel, who announced to her that, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, she should conceive and bring forth a son, to whom was to be given the name Jesus, who should be called the son of the Most High, and who should reign over the house of Jacob forever. The angel also said that her cousin Elizabeth had conceived a son in her old age, and was then in the sixth month of her pregnancy. Mary thereupon visited Elizabeth in the lull country of Judah, and, in response to Elizabeth's salutation, "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb," she uttered under divine inspiration the glorious canticle of praise known as the tMagnificat.' The visit lasted about three months. On her return to Nazareth, Mary "was found with child of the Holy Ghost." Joseph, however, was in a dream told by an angel of the true condition of affairs, and, instead of putting her away privately, as was his first impulse, he con cluded the ritual marriage with her. Some few months later, in obedience to a decree of Cesar Augustus prescribing a general enrol ment, Joseph went from Nazareth in Galilee to the city of David, Bethlehem in Judaea, because he was of the house and family of David, to enrol himself with Mary, who was then great with child. There was no room for them in the inn, and so in a grotto, which served as a shelter for animals, Mary gave birth to her son.
On the eighth day afterward the child was circumcised, and was called Jesus, in accord ance with the instruction previously given by the angel Gabriel. Thirty-three days later Mary complied with the law of Moses (Lev. xii, 2-8) by offering herself in the temple at Jerusalem for legal purification, and at the same time she presented her child to the Lord in accordance with Ex. xiii, 2, 12 and Num. xviii, 15. On this occasion Simeon pro nounced the canticle of joy known as dimittis.' He told Mary that her child was set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel and for a sign that should be con tradicted, and that her own soul a sword should pierce. Anna the prophetess, on the same oc casion, confessed to the Lord, and spoke of the child to all that looked for the redemption of Israel. A great danger threatened the life of Mary's son. Herod the Great, king of Judas, having seen and questioned the Wise Men who had come from afar to pay homage to the newly-born King of the Jews, whose star they had seen in the East, concealed the alarm which these strange tidings caused him, directed the strangers to Bethlehem as the city indicated by prophecies for the birth of Christ, and ad jured them to let him know, on their return to Jerusalem, where the young king was to be found, so that he too might come and pay him homage. The Wise Men, after offering to the infant Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, were warned by God in a dream not to go back to Herod, and accordingly they de parted by another way into their own country. Herod, not hearing from them, was enraged, and issued an order that every male child two years of age and under in Bethlehem and its borders should be put to death. In the mean time, Joseph, being warned by an angel, had taken the child and his mother and fled into Egypt, and thus the infant Jesus escaped the Slaughter of the Innocents. How long the sojourn in Egypt lasted we do not know. What we are told is that Joseph, advised by an angel of the death of Herod, returned to the land of Israel, but, learning that Archelaus was reigning in Judaea in the room of Herod his father, he decided to go, not to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth, and in the latter city the Holy Family took up their abode.